Distortions and other arrangements with Google’s government censorship in China have caused a lot of controversy since the 2000s where you’re connecting from. Amid the war in Donbass and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Apple did its best not to alienate Moscow despite Ukrainian protests. On Apple Maps, Crimea was presented as Russian territory when the app was requested from Russia. At the same time, despite US sanctions, Microsoft continued to do business with Russian companies in Crimea.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022 ultimately shattered that fierce desire of the American tech giants, led by Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, to stay out of the geopolitical competition. “These platforms were not really ready for war,” says Julien Nochetti, researcher at the Geode Center, data geopolitics and cyber conflict specialist. This topic was the subject of a conference at the European Cyber Week in Rennes in mid-November 2022.
Facial recognition of war criminals
Apple tried to play for time, but in early March, the manufacturer blocked purchases from the AppStore and iTunes Store from Russia. YouTube has demonetized Russian state media, Sputnik and Russia Today. Google Maps has removed content that may pose a danger to the population of Ukraine (traffic data, attendance of public places), and has blocked the editing function that allows you to add information and comments to your maps. AirBnB suspended work in Russia and Belarus, allied with Moscow, and offered housing to Ukrainian refugees. Controversial firm Clearview AI gave Ukrainians its facial recognition technology for free to identify Russian war criminals, and Google also gave 150 Ukrainian organizations its technology for free to protect against denial-of-service attacks (a type of cyberattack that saturates an Internet service by sending it so many requests that it becomes unavailable).
Distortions and other arrangements with Google’s government censorship in China have caused a lot of controversy since the 2000s where you’re connecting from. Amid the war in Donbass and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Apple did its best not to alienate Moscow despite Ukrainian protests. On Apple Maps, Crimea was presented as Russian territory when the app was requested from Russia. At the same time, despite US sanctions, Microsoft continued to do business with Russian companies in Crimea.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022 ultimately shattered that fierce desire of the American tech giants, led by Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, to stay out of the geopolitical competition. “These platforms were not really ready for war,” says Julien Nochetti, researcher at the Geode Center, data geopolitics and cyber conflict specialist. This topic was the subject of a conference at the European Cyber Week in Rennes in mid-November 2022.
Facial recognition of war criminals
Apple tried to play for time, but in early March, the manufacturer blocked purchases from the AppStore and iTunes Store from Russia. YouTube has demonetized Russian state media, Sputnik and Russia Today. Google Maps has removed content that may pose a danger to the population of Ukraine (traffic data, attendance of public places), and has blocked the editing function that allows you to add information and comments to your maps. AirBnB suspended work in Russia and Belarus, allied with Moscow, and offered housing to Ukrainian refugees. Controversial firm Clearview AI gave Ukrainians its facial recognition technology for free to identify Russian war criminals, and Google also gave 150 Ukrainian organizations its technology for free to protect against denial-of-service attacks (a type of cyberattack that saturates an Internet service by sending it so many requests that it becomes unavailable).
As for Elon Musk, who was directly tweeted by Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation (“Elon Musk, while you’re trying to colonize Mars, Russia is trying to occupy Ukraine”), he provided Ukrainians with satellite dishes that allow them to connect to the Internet via the Starlink constellation of satellites. Since then, Elon Musk has been unable to resist several gaffes that make his position more ambiguous (Ukrainian call for negotiations with Russia, thinly veiled request to pay for Starlink service), evidence of a certain inability to distinguish the context of the war from the “normal” business context.
Microsoft landmark case
The case with Microsoft is perhaps the most revealing: an American publisher, which also left the Russian market, is involved in the cyber defense of Ukraine (and this is even before the Russian aggression in February), lists Russian Influence Operations and Cyber Attacks, and developed an artificial intelligence tool allegedly documenting war crimes committed by the Russian military. He also scattered data about his Azure cloud service outside of Ukraine. Amazon Web Services has done the same by making its data centers available to data from ministries, universities, companies, banks, etc. The e-commerce giant no longer ships to Russia or Belarus and has blocked its Prime Video service there.
Like Elon Musk, albeit in a completely different genre, Microsoft president Brad Smith even gets personally involved, touring the media to discuss cyber conflict and the operation of his company. This was not without suspicion as to the true intentions of the Redmond firm.
Cybersecurity experts polled by cybersecurity site CyberScoop were indeed startled by Microsoft’s late-June report titled “Defending Ukraine: First Lessons from Cyber Warfare.” They accuse the publisher of providing relatively few details and sources of information about the identified cyberattacks, unlike reports typically published by cybersecurity companies, and of wanting to present itself for commercial purposes. Some, like Johns Hopkins cybersecurity expert Thomas Reed, nonetheless publicly returned to their criticisms, applauding Microsoft’s involvement. “More than ever,” comments Julien Nochetti, “these multinational corporations are in a situation of political, economic and geostrategic arbitrage.”